Katrina's Jewish Voices

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Photograph of the interior of Congregation Beth Israel. Photo by Michael Jacobs. Courtesy of the Atlanta Jewish Times.

Katrina's Jewish Voices

One year after the Hurricane, in 2006, JWA organized Katrina's Jewish Voices, collecting images and oral histories to ensure that the Jewish experience of this catastrophic event would become a part of the history of America and of American Jewry. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we spotlight select video clips from the original exhibit. Discover the stories of women in the New Orleans Jewish community who grappled with the storm, its aftermath, and the long process of rebuilding.

A high school student and several proud grandmothers, new volunteers and seasoned social workers, the women of the New Orleans Jewish community each reacted to the devastation of Katrina in her own way.

Although their experiences and viewpoints were many and varied, the Jewish women who survived Katrina kept returning to certain themes in their stories of the storm and the recovery efforts—the difficulty of asking for help, the importance of community and family, and the impossibility of conveying this modern experience of exile to anyone who had not endured it for themselves.